A beautiful woman and an unrequited love could present an excuse for murder, in this sixth Restoration adventure for architect Christopher Redmayne and Constable Jonathan Bale. Araminta Jewell is one of the beauties of her day. Even her marriage to the staid Sir Martin Culthorpe has not discouraged her hordes of admirers, including Christopher Redmayne's brother Henry, one of her most ardent pursuers. And before the portrait of the new Lady Culthorpe can even be completed, Sir Martin is murdered. Alongside his puritan friend, Constable Jonathan Bale, Redmayne embarks on a quest to discover the killer's identity. The author of the Elizabethan Theatre series, featuring Nicholas Bracewell as a stage manager and amateur sleuth, and the Domesday series with surveyors Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret, Edward Marston here takes us to Restoration London, where Redmayne and Bale uncover crime amid the newly reinstated aristocracy.